Digest Life with Peruvian Comet Soup

This Peruvian journalist we hosted last week as part of an exchange asked me how to download and save youTube vids. any good way to capture Flash? I told him it wasn't possible. He looked disappointed.

i switched my Blogger back end language to Spanish. Evidently "bold" is negrita in Spanish. That's kind of like saying "blackened." That was a pretty good Metallica song. They're playing acoustic at the Bridge School benefit this year. If anyone wants to buy me a ticket that's great. Mall Security was denied a spot, despite submitting this video for consideration.

I saw Ryan Auffenberg the other night at the Make Out Room in SF. We did not make out, though he is a sexy singing machine.

In other now-they're-famous news, Dan Hoyle's latest one-man play Tings Dey Happen got extended in Manhattan and a nice review in the NYTimes. Check it out. I think his dad might be acting in a circus in SF too.

Northwestern Univ. grad Jeffrey Newburg was on TV the other night, playing a lower-class lover scorned by the woman he loved in a Cold Case episode. She went for the rich guy who bought her loads of flowers. Newburg looks skinnier, and with more hair than the time he shaved every little hair off his body, but less than I remember him having. And I thought TV added 10 pounds.

In tonight's news, I went to the SF symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas. He's an alright narrator, he spent minutes telling the crowd about the various pieces. It was the yearly "all concert," a $10 affair for the non-traditional symphony-going crowd, which chimed in throughout the performance with cell phone ringtones, snoring, crinkly candy wrappers, offensive smells and various other entertainment. The program (below) was a bit too "gorgeous," as MTT put it. Something to drown out the random noise might be more appropriate, or they could hand out noisemakers to the crowd to employ at certain points. Like whoopee cushions.

(the links below do not work, sorry)
PROGRAM
Copland Fanfare for the Common Man
Crawford Seeger Andante for Strings
John Adams Short Ride in a Fast Machine
Ravel Shéhérazade
Giacomo Puccini “Vissi d’arte” from Tosca
Giacomo Puccini “O mio babbino caro” from Gianni Schicchi
Prokofiev Scenes from Romeo and Juliet

Weekend Update: Search for the Bomb

My great aunt and I searched her house high and low for the bomb. Her brother mentioned it the other day, saying he hid the incendiary device in the house after returning from military duty as a young man.

She did not even know where to look, first telling me one spot, then retracting her demand. "It's not there, I've cleaned up there."

Up the step ladder, I point the flashlight behind an ancient bookcase, and see the base of a once-golden lamp. The rest of the torch-like lamp lies above everything, laid across the beams spanning the ceiling of the garage. That's a great lamp, Dort tells me.

Next we check behind the cabinets across the way. Nothing. Then the box of fishing weights. There were many different sizes, from a few ounces of weights strung together to one crusty ball weighing at least five pounds, but no bombs.

Back across the garage, behind the furnace we check the crawlspace above the tunnel. The tunnel leads from the front gate, under the kitchen, to the stairs leading to the front door. I did not see anything, until, in the very corner, a cylinder, made of black metal. I angled myself upward, my head tilted to avoid the water pipe, and snagged it with one hand. It was skinny and hollow, with two-inch strips scored out of one end. They were flanged upward, like a bomb blast blew it open.

"I wonder what that is," Dort says. We didn't know and put it down, continuing our search.

We made our way back to the rear of the basement, near our starting point. As Dort rummaged some more, I looked around, picking up a large leather holster that belonged to Dort's dad.

She would tell her brother we searched hard but found no bomb, Dort said.

This whole episode reminded her of when her brother asked her for his ammunition. She had given it to the police, but did not have the heart to tell him it was gone.

youtube, but you don't move

i've seen a couple of these singer-songwriter YouTube videos. the music's great, but the videos leave something to be desired. at least jon greets the viewer with a few words, but why bathe yourself in red light? Film school 101 -- don't throw a glare in the background. This guy sits there, wearing a baseball cap, looking like he's reading the words off the screen. it's like, why not just post an mp3, if your music's that great? course I'm one to talk...this should really be a video response, right?

license to park illegally

i saw Robin Williams this weekend shopping in the Richmond. He parked illegally and smiled at me as he got out of his shiny black car. nice guy. then some other people recognized him and he waved at all of us as he walked down the street. he definitely enjoys being famous. maybe that's why he takes all these terrible movie roles, or roles in terrible movies. i can't blame him, it puts gas in his SUV.

test

best price Life Digest

i got an apartment and a mackbookpro. i made a new song called Dopr D and posted it on Ultra Digest. my life got flip turned upside down and i'd like to take a minute just stop right there, i'll tell you how i became the prince of a city that's right here

my bro moved in to his fiance's
and i was still livin' wit' my aunty
my bro and his woman like drinking wine
chardonnay cab sav and chianti

their place was stuffed from wall to wall
so they moved out and bought a house
i moved in to the apartment
furnished clean and without a mouse

soon music was bumpin' and pasta cooked
my friends came over and saw my place
they could not help themselves but said
Pete my brother that's one fine space

i come and i go but i mostly don't
stay here at all and it's making me broke
i pay so much it's like i died and went
on to heaven with the rich folk

i shant be here quite so long
it's running my bank account to the ground
i'll find me a place with a lower price
and then they'll say, bro you're found.

Dropping Bonds

I saw the Bonds / steroids book authors last night. I asked whether race played a role in the reporting on steroids. Writer Lance Williams started his answer by saying that race plays a role in everything in America and finished by saying that Barry makes $18 million per year, so he cannot be criticized as much as Barry. He was being facetious in the latter comment.

DVD OUT NOW!

Failure to Launch is out on DVD, and I star in one of five "featurettes." See it here now What are you waiting for?!

Spam-A-Day: Daily Dose of Spam Poetry

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Gateway Bug

Late in summer 2001, my laptop wouldn't start. I don't remember why but I'm almost certain it was user error. I had it since I got to college, about a year and a half at that point.

I worked two jobs that summer, one for my grandpa and one for the Palo Alto Weekly. In my offtime, I took the laptop in to a Gateway store in the South Bay. The problem persisted. As I left for Bolivia to study abroad that fall, I gave it to mother to get fixed.

She sent it to their repair people in Texas.

Sept. 11, 2001, came and went.

Gateway said the computer had suspicious literature or material on it, according to my mother. They sent it back without a hard drive in it.

That sucked and I complained to no avail. I got a new hard drive and made copies of my files. My sister found one and joked about me hiding it from the government.

Sorties

I'm gonna write some stories, me getting my computer stolen, me getting etc...cuz I'm sittin' at work with nothing to do.

Pirate Space

There once was a pirate named Bluefields. He used computers and space-age spy technology to eat his breakfast. When he came to play with other little pirates, he would fit right in and direct them. They would push their little pirate ships around the map they had in day care.

One day he was called upon to lead a real pirate ship into battle. Battle is a hard thing. But when you are a pirate you need to make certain compromises.

Cauze

UPDATE: Put the Genocide in your school's curriculum! I interviewed Armenian Professor Hayg Oshagan on the Genocide remembrance movement.


Armenian scion Oliver Gordon, pictured at right, stands with Fr. Vazken Movsesian. They put on a night of remembrance of the Armenian Genocide at Sacred Heart Prep in Atherton, Calif. I attended along with some family. Dort and Grandma spoke Armenian the whole time. I also put up this piece about the band System of a Down's genocide-related activities...Basically I think it's a cool cause and my family has something to say about it. Grandma Rose used to be all freaked out sometimes that "the gates are closing" at night. I think that refers to some nighttime security thing in the Old Country, like you had to get inside the gates before they closed. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with the Genocide, but it still reinforced the idea that in the past, bad things happened. Whatever. I was an impressionable youth, though, and that made for good story.

Raf's Face

This is Raf. He is an excellent vegan cook. He lived at my and Adam Kader's and this woman's apartment in La Paz. Dirty frenchie. What's in that guy's hand? Pool cue? Didgeridoo? Raf sent the shot to Adam recently. I guess they're still in touch.

Photoz

Watch me flickr, watch the stars

Cute phase

That's Tina with a model of her boyfriend's teeth, or maybe someone else's. Maybe it's a model of no one's teeth, just the perfect conception of a mouth of teeth. Or, rather the execution of the conception of perfect teeth. Yeah. Anyway, she goes to dental school with a bunch of mormons. She doesn't fit in too well, I guess. That's okay. She's got her own planet in my book.

Movie Times

Hey, everyone go see Failure to Launch today, even though I'm not technically in it.

Google Haze

I published this in the Alexandria Times. I guess I forgot to mention how they said, "No Comment," about the actual uses of the technology.

Alexandria Web

Google wins patent for wireless technology

By PETER MICEK Alexandria Times Special Writer

There could be a few more O’s in Google soon.

The company stepped toward a more diverse panoply of products by landing patent number 6,982,945 on Jan. 3 at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office in Alexandria, for technology enabling faster transfers of voice and data wirelessly.

The “baseband direct sequence spread spectrum transceiver” uses CDMA technology, something developed to encrypt secret messages during the Second World War.

CDMA stands for Code Division Multiple Access, where signals spread over a variety of frequencies, rather than just one, to send messages as quickly as possible. In World War II, the Allies developed CDMA to send messages in pieces over several frequencies, making them harder to decode.

The patent application, filed in 2001, makes reference to possible uses of the new technology.

“With high speed wireless access,” it reads, “mobile users can obtain instant access to the Internet, business data (e.g., stock market quotes, sales reports, inventory information, price checks, customer data, emails, pages, etc.), and other real time data (e.g., traffic updates, weather information, sports news, etc.).

The goal is to provide cellular handsets, personal digital assistants, portable communications devices, etc. the ability to transmit and receive digital data as well as make conventional telephone calls. The trend is towards ever faster mobile data speeds to meet customer demands. With greater data speeds, it is possible to provide even more data to more users.”

Decoding Google’s intentions may be less difficult than reading the patent form. Though he admits he’s “no expert” on the wireless industry, Search Engine Watch blogger and news editor Gary Price asks, “Could licensing this technology to various wireless providers be a new revenue stream for Google?”

Another blogger, Om Malik of “Om Malik’s Blog,” links the new technology to Google’s unveiling of search and email services for mobile phones. All the data, Malik says, points toward the Mountain View, Calif.-based company moving into the wireless realm.

Google made headlines last year for its offer of wireless internet services free across the city. More recently, it denied the United States government a chance to view all the search terms entered into the search engine, while agreeing to help the Chinese government censor the information its citizens post and view.

News, not all of it good, piles up on search giant.

Though countries worldwide use its services, Google does 76 percent of its sales in the United States and Britain. Recent problems in British markets led to a temporary drop of nearly 20 percent in Google’s stock price. Business analysts see little chance for diversification in the short term.

Unfazed

People dissin' on MP, my hometown, but still I return. Unfazed. Amazing? I guess. Others go to and fro while still I jam on the b-ball courts of my old school, unmasking the posers, and rejecting the downers. Come by, if you dare, to the town in between Nawlin's and SF.

Vice Presidential Daze

For the record, I think Elmer Fudd makes a nice foil to Bugs.